


All for Believing

by parcequelle



Category: The Closer
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-29
Updated: 2015-07-29
Packaged: 2018-04-11 22:25:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4454702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/parcequelle/pseuds/parcequelle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If living this farcical imitation of Brenda Leigh Johnson’s life is worth anything, it’s that. That woman's warm, wry voice in her ear, in her mind. (Slight AU post-7x10 "Fresh Pursuit".)</p>
            </blockquote>





	All for Believing

Since that day, the day that changed everything, Brenda has taken to sleeping with her Glock on the top of her nightstand, rather than inside the drawer. Not that sleep is an accurate term for the low-level dozing she sometimes achieves for a couple of hours some nights, but she still has a shred or two of optimism buried somewhere inside her, despite the catastrophic mess that is now her life.

She hasn't bothered to tidy the house in months, and sometimes Fritz tells her off for not caring (hardly fair, she thinks, since she often shoves her candy wrappers under the couch and then it looks a lot cleaner), but mostly he sighs and does it himself while she stays in her customary spot: curled up beneath a blanket, her glasses halfway down her nose, head buried in volume after volume of precedent case law. She's almost an expert, now; at least that's what Sharon keeps telling her, when she calls at precisely eleven fifteen every night to ask how she's doing.

Brenda can't really remember when it started, the late-night talks; their uncharacteristically slow, subtle, quiet transition from sometimes-occasional allies into trusted confidantes into friends - into equals - but it did and it hasn't stopped. She can't remember either when it switched from once a week to twice to thrice to every day, but she does remember that she always found it refreshing, Sharon's honesty, her peculiar measure of coolness and warmth, her smoke-and-gravel voice and the hitch of her ever-wry smile through the phone. It's a routine that anchors Brenda more than she'd like to admit, but she supposes that that's why Sharon keeps it up – because she knows. She always did know, Brenda supposes, with half a smile that twists her mouth into something she almost can't recall, a reaction it seems only Sharon can ever induce, these days. She’ll never get her head around Sharon, she thinks. It is beyond her how someone who knows her so little should understand her so well, but the events of recent months have mostly made her more grateful for it than anything.

"You always know," Brenda murmurs. It will come out nonsensical, she knows, but with time and exposure Sharon has learned to navigate the often-illogical meanderings of Brenda’s speech, and she won't be fazed. She probably won’t even ask; Brenda knows that she usually writes these comments off as a result of the too many hours Brenda has spent lost in her textbooks and her thoughts. It is almost one o'clock now, too, and Brenda's incoherency tends to grow along with the darkness (though it may also be proportionate to the inanity of the infomercials gracing her TV at the time; right now, for instance, there is a man displaying what Brenda feels to be an unlikely amount of enthusiasm as he slices through a sneaker – not his own, she suspects – with an oversized steak knife).

“Isn’t really what I look for in a kitchen utensil," she says.

“That’s because you don’t cook,” Sharon tells her.

(And this is exactly why Brenda likes Sharon, because Sharon can always follow her train of thought, even when Brenda herself doesn’t know where it’s headed or even where it began, and if she can’t she can always guess at a close enough point to continue the conversation anyway.)

Theatrically, Brenda harrumphs. “What would you know?”

“Ha! I was at Christmas dinner with you last year, remember?”

“But I didn’t cook any of that!”

Sharon smirks; Brenda can hear it. “That’s exactly my point. I didn’t say you _can’t_ cook, I said you _don’t_ cook.”

Brenda harrumphs again, absent of a comeback. In the end she settles for, “I wouldn’t have fallen for that if this were the morning, you know.”

“Oh, I know,” Sharon says, in a voice that clearly demonstrates that she is humouring Brenda because somewhere along the way she must have decided that it could be fun. "I know you're at your best in the morning, especially before you've inhaled a bucket of coffee and a pound of some godforsaken blight on what's left of your health."

"Try that on me all you like, Cap'n Raydor, but I saw you eatin' a chocolate bar a few weeks back and I know it so surely I'd swear so in court."

Sharon says nothing.

Brenda hopes her smugness is radiating through the phone; no, not just radiating, _wafting_ , _flooding_ , positively _drowning_ her, so that Sharon can hardly _breathe_ for the unavoidable awareness of how right Brenda is.

"Well? What do you have to say for yourself?"

"It was 75% cocoa," Sharon tells her, as haughty and self-important as Brenda has ever heard her, and it makes Brenda want to clap her hands with glee.

"25% sugar, you mean."

"Yes, well," Sharon says, "I'm still healthier than you, you walking time bomb of chemical disaster. It is utterly beyond me that you are still alive, let alone under 200 pounds."

"I have good genes."

"You have _excellent_ jeans. It's a shame you don't wear them more often."

It's happened more times than she can count, these last few weeks, but somehow Brenda is never fully prepared for the punch in the gut that is Sharon Raydor so unapologetically flirting with her. She is spared the impossible task of responding, her traitorous mouth suddenly dry, as Sharon continues, "Are you watching this? Perhaps I ought to give that woman a call. Let her know she’s about half an undulation away from flashing her nipple to the country's nocturnal population."

Brenda splutters so hard that it almost turns into a choke, and Joel, indignant at being dislodged from where he was comfortably curled on her feet, scrambles away with an accusatory look on his face.

“Not you too,” she grumbles, and then remembers the phone; she spends a moment searching for it in the tangle of blankets around her before she finds it, wedges it anew between her ear and her shoulder. To Sharon, she says, “I’m sorry, what?”

"Her number's right there on the screen," Sharon continues reasonably, as though nothing had happened. “What do you think?"

"Can't say she seems your type, really. Too--"

"--Busty?"

"I was going to say blonde."

"Everything in moderation, Brenda Leigh."

She's grown more familiar with Sharon's unexpected brand of deadpan humour, but there are still times - usually times like these, in the deep, quiet night - when it catches her completely off-guard. She sets down her coffee in an attempt to avoid any further damage to the blanket, which is now dotted with cooling specs of mud-coloured liquid. "Dang," she says.

There’s laughter around the edges of Sharon’s sigh as she asks, "What did you spill this time?"

"Nothing, coffee -- what do you mean this time? I just can't seem to – do you know my blanket? The one Mama knitted for me last Christmas, when – no, you wouldn’t remember--"

"Actually yes," Sharon replies, amusement colouring her voice, and Brenda thinks for the thousandth time that she may never get used to this gentler, more affectionate side of her captain, regardless of how welcome it is. “I do. In fact, if I recall correctly, it was a rather unfortunate pattern of bottle green and yellow checks, and you did a terrible job of hiding how much you disliked it. I don’t think your mother noticed, for what it's worth; I have a suspicion that that was around the time that Lieutenant Flynn tried to help out with the potatoes and we almost lost the break room for good.”

The problem with Sharon, Brenda thinks, is that sometimes she talks like that: slower and deeper, with even greater deliberate enunciation than usual, and Brenda listens, but she listens to the sounds and not the words and then Sharon falls silent, because she’s waiting, understandably, for Brenda to respond. And Brenda, who has no idea what she is supposed to be responding to, has to choose between a) asking Sharon politely to please repeat herself (usually good, occasionally bad), or just winging it (usually bad, occasionally disastrous). Once, because she was too proud to admit she'd been distracted by Sharon's throaty laugh, Brenda had had to endure a fourteen-minute lecture on why reality TV was the worst thing to happen to North America since high-fructose corn syrup (though she has her own feelings about that particularly poison, thanks ever so much). The whole thing was made immeasurably more insufferable by the fact that of course she already _agreed_ , just didn't dare tell her so, because what if Sharon started to think that those dreadful lectures could sway her opinion?

Brenda still occasionally finds herself in the improbable position of having to defend the supposed merits of the eighty-seventh season of _Survivor_ , and it's exhausting trying to come up with valid reasons she doesn't believe. It's like the high school debating team all over again.

“Brenda?”

...Darn it. Brenda wonders how long that tangent took in real-time, decides it can't have been as long as it feels, and settles on, “Yes, well—” she knows she heard the word Christmas in there somewhere, so she runs with it. “Do you think about that often? Last Christmas?”

Sharon is quiet for long moments, considering before she speaks the way she always does, and Brenda waits. Somewhere in the course of these late-night conversations, these exchanges of confidence that have all but obliterated the concept of professional distance, the silence between them has shifted from awkward or borderline-hostile to easy. If living this farcical imitation of Brenda Leigh Johnson’s life is worth anything, it’s that. That woman's warm, wry voice in her ear, in her mind.

“I suppose I do,” Sharon admits. “Sometimes I—” she falters, uncharacteristic in her hesitation. “Sometimes I wonder how we got this far at all.”

“Lovely to meet you, shame it's under such unpleasant circumstances?”

“Yes, exactly.”

“Only it wasn't that, was it, because we had years to get to know one another before this lawsuit happened, and we didn't.”

“No,” Sharon agrees. “We didn't, because you were stubborn and arrogant and generally impossible to deal with--”

“And you were obtuse and aggravatin' and unrelentin' in your efforts to undermine my investigation! On several occasions!”

With that, Brenda is prepared to cross back into the all-too-familiar territory of hostility, and she finds herself almost relishing the prospect. She’s spent too much time examining every aspect of her behaviour to bother denying it any longer: sometimes, yes, she deliberately starts arguments with Sharon Raydor just to feel the powerful focus of all that frustrated exasperation directed at her, just to feel the thrill of pitching herself against a woman as strong and as smart as she is who is never afraid to fight back. But then Sharon does the unthinkable: she laughs, and it's not just a chuckle, it's a full, affectionate peal that rings delightedly down the telephone line and curls its heated way into Brenda’s mind.

“My goodness,” Sharon says, “it's a mystery why we weren't the best of friends from the day we met.”

“Or a year after that.”

“Or a year after _that_. And look at that, we’re back to Christmas.”

Brenda nods even though she knows Sharon can't see it, chews on a fingernail. “I didn't like you much, then, you know."

"No," Sharon agrees. "I didn't like you much either."

“I’d never have guessed,” Brenda drawls. “But you know my Mama did? Like you, I mean. She said you were lovely. Frankly I’ve been trying to figure out how you pulled that one off; she’s usually a very good judge of character.”

“Oh, hilarious.” Brenda imagines Sharon waving at her in dismissal as she says it, somehow elegant and sarcastic at the same time, and smiles before she realises she’s doing it. “I liked Willie Rae as well,” Sharon says. “She was certainly friendlier than you were.”

“Not that you’d know; you spent more time talking to that gnome than you did to me."

"Jealous, are you? What can I say, the gnome was a better conversationalist."

Brenda snorts. "Don't say that too loudly, Captain. People might start to question your judgment." She pauses, reaches over to readjust the blanket; her toes are cold. "They're already questioning your taste in friends."

"Really now, Brenda," Sharon drawls, rolling the 'r' in her name in a way that makes Brenda squirm in her seat, glance reflexively in the direction of the staircase. "Don't be silly. Women like us don't have friends."

Brenda huffs out a laugh, too aware of the truth in the joke.

“Oh no,” Sharon goes on, “we’re far too busy competing for Pope’s attention to be friends with each other.”

It’s lucky Brenda’s coffee is long-gone for that one; she is verging on laughter at the mere suggestion of Sharon competing for anyone’s attention, let alone Pope’s, and she schools her features into something like seriousness as she starts to say, “Honestly, Captain—”

"But who to say they're wrong? I'm still not sure if I like you."

Now Brenda's grinning, and she tries unsuccessfully to keep it out of her voice. "Liar."

Sharon scoffs but doesn't deny it, and Brenda, flooded suddenly with an unexpected warmth, finds herself fervently wishing that Sharon were here; that she could see her as she’d square her shoulders and flick her hair out of her face, an attempt at haughtiness sabotaged by her eyes and her smile. 

*

"We'll think of something," Sharon tells her, later, when their conversation has slowed and their voices grown softer, and the stifling presence of what lies ahead is no longer something they can ignore. “If you don't – if it doesn't work out. We'll think of something.” And it isn't so much an empty attempt at comfort as a vow, an undoubted belief – she’d almost call it certainty, so strong is the conviction in Sharon’s voice – and Brenda wishes she could believe it herself. 

The problem is that it’s all going to be over, tomorrow; it’s going to be over and Brenda hasn’t found a single precedent they can argue, and Gavin postponed their meeting this morning by half an hour so he could go to his desperate-emergency coffee place downtown, so Brenda knows things are bad. The guys have all been over to see her in person; these months of Goldman breathing down their necks have made them paranoid, and they try not to call her to talk about legal business. It doesn’t even really involve her team, anymore, except that it does, because when she said that to them, one time at 3am when the lot of them – dear Buzz included – had congregated in her kitchen to beg her to give them something to do, Andy Flynn had turned the force of his enraged indignation right on her and growled, “Like hell this isn’t our problem. You’re family. Don’t ever say that again.” It was the first and only time he’d ever given her an order, and he didn’t leave her side for the rest of the night.

Sharon often says things like this, offers a word or two of support just so Brenda can’t forget that it’s there, that _she's_ there, but this is the first time it doesn’t provide her any comfort. If anything, the decisiveness in her voice just makes Brenda more desperate; how can this woman still be on her side? How can any of them, after what her carelessness and hubris have put them through?

“I don’t want to—” Dismayed, she hears her voice break, and she swallows hard on the traitorous lump in her throat. “I don’t want my team to have to see me being found guilty, Sharon, I don’t – I don’t want that to be the last thing they remember. I’ve already caused them enough problems with all this mess. Why should they be tarnished by what I’ve done?”

“My God, Brenda,” Sharon says, her own voice suspiciously unsteady, “would you exercise some selfishness for one second? Your team will be fine. They’ll probably all resign in protest at your not being there to lead them, but they will be _fine_.” 

She wants to laugh at that, but the weighted finality of it all has settled around her in a heavier, more definitive way than ever, and she can’t. “Sharon,” she murmurs, “I just – I know I probably won’t get to see you for long, tomorrow, and Lord knows I’ll be all nerves anyway, but I—” She clenches her fist around the phone, forces down the tightness that is spreading up through her chest, “I just wanted to thank you. It doesn’t mean much, I know, but I couldn’t have made it to this point, I couldn’t have – come this far without you. Truly. I don't know I'd--”

“Thank you,” Sharon murmurs, her voice so soft, so close and so far, that Brenda wants to reach through the phone and grasp it in her hands. “But you have nothing to thank me for, Brenda. It's been a – a pleasure, listening to you invent new justifications for The Bachelor every second week.”

“ _Sharon_ , you--”

“Yes?” Her innocent act is sickening, Brenda thinks. Utterly sickening. She is horrified when her indignation expresses itself in the form of a giggle, and she quickly swallows it down, hopes Sharon wasn't listening (a likely story).

“Were you ever going to tell me that you knew?”

“I just did, didn't I?”

“Don't think I don't see that you're answering a question with a question there.” Brenda is shaking her head on a smile, regardless of the distance between them. “You are a worthy opponent, my dear captain, and a worthier ally. Your reluctant honesty does you credit.”

“As does your dubious flattery you.”

And how is it, Brenda wonders, that she feels that she is closer to Sharon Raydor right now, phone lines and crossroads between them, than she has been to anyone in her life? Somewhere in the course of this exchange, her heart has started to pound like its trying to get out of her ribs, and she has the strangest feeling that--

“Brenda.”

“Yes?”

“In keeping with the theme of honesty,” Sharon starts, too measured. “You know very well that this could be your last night of freedom for a very long time, so I have to ask—” Here Sharon pauses, and it sounds to Brenda as though she’s working up the nerve to speak, “—why aren’t you with your husband?”

She is silent, gripping the phone so tightly her fingers, red, start to ache.

“Brenda?”

She opens her mouth. “Because I—” Closes it again.

“Because you what?” Her voice is deadly soft, barely there.

Brenda swallows; the words are right there, on the tip of her tongue – she can see them, feel them, hear them, but guilt and terror combine to constrict her vocal cords. Oh, but she wants to tell her; she needs to tell her, before she winds up in a correctional facility alongside women she’s spent the past seven years of her life lying to and condemning from the other side of an interrogation table. She takes a breath; her insides are jelly, and her voice comes out on a tremor. “I’m not with my husband, Sharon, because I can’t—”

“What?”

“Because he’s not—”

_You_.

“Brenda?”

She jumps a foot in the air, her heart thumping wildly in her chest, as Fritz pokes his head out over the banister halfway down the stairs. “Why are you still awake? You should have come to bed hours ago.”

Brenda tucks the phone into her bathrobe to hide it and nods. “I know, I just have to finish up here. You go on.”

Fritz frowns, but doesn’t argue. “Okay,” he says, “but don’t be long. You need rest for tomorrow.”

Tomorrow.

Her verdict. Her condemnation. Fritz, the eternal optimist, is the only one who’s still holding out any real hope for a win. Except for Gavin, of course, who refuses to concede victory even after he’s been defeated, but he doesn’t count.

She waits for Fritz to disappear back up the stairs, waits for the telltale click of the bedroom door, before she slides the phone back out – warm now from the burning touch of her skin even though pyjamas – and cradles it against her ear once again. Sharon is silent, waiting, but Brenda doesn’t doubt that she’s still there. She always is.

“I suppose you heard that,” she whispers, shattered and exhausted and wired from that single moment in which she both almost willingly gave herself away and got caught.

“Enough of it, yes. Are you all right?”

Brenda’s laughter is bitter. “You shouldn’t be asking me that. I’m a terrible person, Sharon. I deserve this.”

“Take that back.”

“I do. I think you know it, too.”

“Take it _back_.”

“Oh, Sharon, I don’t know what I’ve ever done to earn your support or your loyalty, but you are a better woman that I will ever be. I—Sharon? What are you doing?” She senses a shift; the background noise has changed from nothing but the occasional rustling of bedclothes to quiet, rhythmic thuds; a couple of creaks, a crack. “Are you still there?”

“—Yes,” comes Sharon’s voice after a brief moment wherein Brenda has started to grow concerned that something’s wrong. “Yes, and I’m – gosh, it’s freezing tonight – I’ve just left my house.”

“But — why did you—”

“Because I’m coming to yours.”

“You’re what? Sharon—Captain Raydor, what are you—?” _Click_. Brenda stares – horrified, astounded – at the object in her hands, and says the only thing that comes to mind. “Oh, that _woman_.”

True to her word, Sharon comes; Brenda hears her car pull up a minute before she sees her, though she is mildly impressed that Sharon thought to park a couple of houses away so as to detract attention from her destination. She locks her car and walks briskly to Brenda’s front door (dressed in the totally unbelievable combination of an overcoat, red silk pyjamas, and what appear from Brenda’s standpoint to be oversized hiking boots) and Brenda hurries to open it before Sharon can knock and draw the attention of Fritz – or even worse, Joel, whose threatening stare has always been several degrees more alarming.

Brenda opens the door a crack, just enough to poke her head out. “ _Sharon_ ,” she hisses. “Why are you here?” Then, “It’s freezing, but I can’t really ask you to come in, can I? Maybe we can just – oh, for heaven’s sake, hold on.” Brenda reaches behind the door to tug her coat off the hook (it’s the pink one, unfortunately; she can feel Sharon rolling her eyes as she draws it tight around her body) and then steps out onto the porch, making sure to shut the door quietly behind her. 

She folds her arms across her chest and looks straight at Sharon, whose eyes are clear and bright despite the fact that she’s huddled against the breeze. They are watching each other, silent, and then Brenda says, “Sharon,” and it comes out as more of a plea than she’d intended.

“Brenda.”

“Sharon. Why are you here?”

Sharon opens her mouth but there's no sound, no sound, just her tongue darting out to moisten her lips, her eyes hot on Brenda's when Brenda looks up because she'd been watching it, watching the motion, the trace of her tongue. Her cheeks are burning, Brenda can feel them, but she isn't ashamed, can't be; how could she when there is no shame left to feel?

"Brenda." Sharon is closer, has stepped closer, and Brenda fathoms she can almost feel the heat radiating from her body. The collar of her overcoat is tucked in on one side, a testament to how quickly and unthinkingly she left her house to come here, to come to Brenda, for a reason Brenda can no longer pretend not to know.

Her hand is on the collar, Brenda realises; she has reached out without conscious thought and tucked it in, and her ungloved fingers grip the material, stinging where the cold bites into them, where she's touching Sharon's skin. She hears the sharp jerk of breath in Sharon's voice, feels it in the jump of her clavicle, and Sharon is closer, still, and closer, until Brenda finds her own back against the side of the house, the house she shares with her husband, and she finds that she has pulled Sharon in with her. The resistance on Sharon's face is breathtaking, the control of desire that twitches her jaw and darkens her eyes, and Brenda's stomach rolls, heat extending its fingers deep, deep down.

"Sharon--oh--"

Sharon's hands are in her hair, stroking with a touch too gentle for this woman's fierce strength, too loving for Brenda to handle, and she gasps.

"Brenda Leigh," Sharon murmurs, and is it the third, the fourth time she's said her name? It doesn't even sound like her name, anymore, the way Sharon says it, the way she wraps herself around it and turns it into a precious, delicious thing, deep and rough and so full of want that it makes Brenda dizzy. "If you tell me to walk away, I'll walk away. I will drive back to my house right now and forget this ever happened." She touches her forehead to Brenda's, shielding her body from the wind. "But please, if you're going to do it," and she's almost _laughing_ , the deranged woman, "do it _soon_."

And then Brenda knows, but who is kidding? She's known all along.

"I'm not going to do it," she says, her own voice like rocks, and she drags Sharon in by the coat.

Sharon manages to husk out, "Oh, thank goodness," before she pulls Brenda in against her, hard, and kisses her and kisses her and kisses her.

She loses herself, loses time, loses all interest in the cold and the world and the outside. She doesn't care that she is standing on her front porch, outside her front door, in the middle of the night when here husband is less than twenty metres away; she doesn't care, because Sharon is here, Sharon came, came to her, and her lips are soft and her tongue is gentle and probing but still she takes control, and Brenda sinks into her, into her mouth, and doesn't _care_. This is what freedom tastes like, she thinks; doing the thing that has been haunting you for months – maybe for years – and consequences be damned. She doesn't think she'd stop even if Fritz turned up right now and she hates herself for it, sudden and sharp, but it doesn't stop her from sliding her hands up the back of Sharon's silk pyjamas and raking her fingernails, experimentally, down her back. Sharon gasps and arches, bites Brenda's lip and makes her gasp in turn, and there is nothing in the world except this.

A moment, a millenium later, Sharon breaks away from her, panting, and leans her temple against Brenda's. Sharon's hands are at her hips, her skin warm in the cool night air, and Brenda sighs a long, deep sigh. Her lips are tingling. She has had a kiss like that in – has she ever had a kiss like that? It doesn't matter, really, because it's set the bar impossibly high for the rest of her life.

Her life, her life that will end tomorrow in a court room, and then what will this mean? She can't think about it, won't; she scrunches her eyes shut against the onslaught of reality, revels in the indulgence of being childish.

“I'm going to say something selfish, now,” Sharon murmurs.

“And what's that?”

Sharon reaches up and traces her index finger over Brenda's lips, and a shiver runs through her. “I'm glad I came here, tonight. You have – you have no idea how long I've wanted you, Brenda Leigh.”

Arousal pulses through her body with renewed vigour, and Brenda laughs, bitter. “We've always excelled in our timing, haven't we?” She nips at the finger still at her lips, brushes Sharon's uncharacteristically unkempt hair out of her eyes. “For what it's worth, I'm glad you came here, too.”

Sharon doesn't ask her directly, but the question is in her eyes.

“At least now, whatever happens tomorrow, I'll know.”

“Know what?” Her voice is whisper, almost swallowed by the breeze, and her glasses are sitting askew on her nose, and the tip of her nose is red, and Brenda loves her, so fiercely it almost knocks the breath from her lungs.

Brenda kisses her, one last time, one last chance. “That it was worth it.”

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally going to end with Brenda getting sentenced to do time, Flynn and Provenza hijacking the marshals' van, and she and Sharon running away to Canada to open a B&B. Just so you know.


End file.
